When actress Lucy Lawless and six other Greenpeace activists boarded an Arctic-bound oil rig in Port Taranaki in late February, their target – the oil giant Shell – was soon hit by a tsunami-size wave of international condemnation. Over the next four days the inboxes of Shell Oil executives were flooded with emails – 125,000 of them – from supporters of the Greenpeace action.
When Shell effectively blocked the email traffic, Greenpeace changed tack, turning the email campaign into an online petition to try to persuade Shell to abandon its controversial plans to drill for oil in previously unexplored Alaskan waters. In just a few weeks, the petition gathered 341,000 signatures – 15,000 from New Zealanders. According to Greenpeace New Zealand head Bunny McDiarmid, it was a much bigger and more rapid turnout than for previous Greenpeace petitions, and will almost certainly mean Lawless and her celebrity ilk will be much in demand by Greenpeace in future to promote its protests.
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